Todesfalle von Chikago

Reporter Alan Ladd stumbles across a strange woman, dead of tuberculosis in a seedy Southside hotel. Her address book, however, hints at a wild and well-connected past. (The girl, with the improbable moniker of Rosita Jean D'Ur, is played in flashback by the improbable Donna Reed.) Ladd's quest, as any noir quest should, takes him up and down the intricate layers of Chicago society, through some of which his tour guide is society dame June Havoc, who plays it with panache. This downfall of a good kid with some bad breaks begins to obsess Ladd, and Chicago Deadline (it's been remarked) could almost have been a grittier Laura set not in high society but on cusp where shabby respectability meets the demimonde. But the cunning Vera Caspary (who wrote the novel Laura) is alas nowhere in evidence, so Chicago Deadline becomes almost an object lesson in Edmund Wilson's dictum that the heavy atmospherics in detective fiction are rarely justified by the conclusion. Nonetheless, for most of its running time, Chicago Deadline is a dark and haunting ride.

Ace reporter Ed Adams (Alan Ladd) is at a skid row hotel on an assignment when a woman is found dead of natural causes in another room. Ed views the body and concludes that there is a story behind the death of this woman. Ed also pockets the woman's personal notebook of phone numbers. Her name had been Rosita Jean d'Ur (Donna Reed, seen in flashback) but anybody that Ed calls or sees to ask about Rosita, he is forcefully told by each that they never heard of her. What's up? Was she evil? Her brother (Arthur Kennedy) insists she wasn't. Was evil done to her? Ed needs to find. Getting thrown out of people's houses and beaten up by the local gangster's thugs only make him more determined. Also with June Havoc, Barry Kroeger, Shepherd Strudwick, and Dave Willock. The print I saw was pretty bad. The video probably came from a VHS recording off local TV. My first clue was when the logo for "KHGT TV 26 Honolulu" appeared for a few seconds in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. This is a little seen film but at the time was nominated for an Edgar Award as Best Motion Picture by the Mystery Writers Of America.

Alan Ladd does a good job as a Chicago newspaper reporter in this mystery tale of a beautiful young girl in her twenties whom he finds dead. He takes her address book and puts it in his pocket and then reports her death to the police. He is determined to find out about her. And that leads to dangers, murders, and plenty of complications. Ladd one by one contacts the people she knew to try to piece together what is going on, nearly getting killed several times in the process, and others are killed as well to stop them talking. He identifies her and meets her very sympathetic brother, played by Arthur Kennedy, but he cannot tell the whole story. We see flashbacks as different people tell Ladd parts of the tale, and in those the girl is played by Donna Reed with her usual sympathetic face and quiet manner. This excellent film noir is little known but deserves attention. It is a good'un.

I have seen this excellent movie in 1951 in Barcelona/Spain when I was 20 and I liked it then and continue to like now very much, I considered it one of the greatest noir classic movies in history. Alan Ladd is fantastic in his role as a reporter; Donna Red is beautiful and had great performance in his playback roll, as Arthur Kennedy and the rest of the cast. is a pity that original seams lost. I have a copy of a VHS from a Honolulu TV, but it can be watched pretty well. the story is very well done by writers Warren Duff and Tiffany Thayer, and the development of the history very well done by director Lewis Allen. Alan Ladd one of my preferred actors is superb and I had said all the cast specially June Havoc, beautiful and charm-ant actress. the end of the movie remains on your mind as one of best ends of a movie in Hollywood history. I highly recommend for the be-lovers of noir classics.

I prefered ILLEGAL and CHICAGO DEADLINE from the same director Lewis Allen and also starring Alan Ladd, but all those Paramount Pictures film noirs are true crime noir features, no problem. Alan Ladd is a bit more wooden as usual, and Berry Kroeger is not Paul Stewart - APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER - either. The plot is also weaker than in the other two films which I mentioned just above. The story of investigation could have been grittier, tougher, but this movie remaiins worth watching if you have never seen it before. When Alan Ladd was still a big star, before his fall down. Donna Reed also brings much to this movie. Take advantage of it.